Henry D.

Smyth was a professor of physics and chairman of the physics department of Princeton
University from 1935 to 1949.[1] During World War II, he was involved in the Manhattan Project from
early 1941, initially as a member of the National Defense Research Committee's S-1 Uranium
Committee, and later as an associate director of the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. In late
1943, the President of Princeton University, Harold W. Dodds, began insisting that Smyth work parttime at Princeton, where there was a shortage of physicists because so many of them were engaged
in war work. Princeton had commitments to teach Army and Navy personnel, and he needed
physicists like Smyth to meet those commitments.[2] Smyth therefore became a consultant at
Chicago, where he was in charge of designing a nuclear reactor that used heavy water as a neutron
moderator,[3] and commuted from Princeton, working in Chicago on alternate weeks. [2]
In early 1944, Smyth raised the possibility of producing an unclassified report for the general public
on the achievements of the Manhattan Project. The director of the Metallurgical Laboratory, Arthur
Compton, supported the idea. He arranged a meeting with James B. Conant, the President of
Harvard University and one of the senior administrators of the Manhattan Project, who had similar
thoughts. Conant took up the matter with the Manhattan Project's director, Major General Leslie R.
Groves, Jr.. In April, Smyth received a formal letter from Groves asking him to write such a report.
Both the report and the choice of Smyth as its author were approved by the Manhattan Project's
governing body, the Military Policy Committee, in May 1944.[2][4]
The Report was to serve two functions. First, it was to be the public and official U.S. government
account of the development of the atomic bombs, outlining the development of the then-secret
laboratories and production sites at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford,
Washington, and the basic physical processes responsible for the functioning of nuclear weapons, in
particular nuclear fission and the nuclear chain reaction. Second, it served as a reference for other
scientists as to what information was declassifiedanything said in the Smyth Report could be said
freely in open literature. For this reason, the Smyth Report focused heavily on information already
available in declassified literature, such as much of the basic nuclear physics used in weapons,
which was either already widely known in the scientific community or could have been easily
deduced by a competent scientist.[5]
Smyth stated the purpose of the Smyth Report in the Preface:
The ultimate responsibility for our nation's policy rests on its citizens and they can discharge such
responsibilities wisely only if they are informed. The average citizen cannot be expected to
understand clearly how an atomic bomb is constructed or how it works but there is in this country a
substantial group of engineers and scientists who can understand such things and who can explain
the potentialities of atomic bombs to their fellow citizens. The present report is written for this

professional group and is a matter-of-fact, general account of work in the USA since 1939 aimed at
the production of such bombs. It is neither a documented official history nor a technical treatise for
experts. Secrecy requirements have affected both the detailed content and general emphasis so that
many interesting developments have been omitted. [6]
This contrasted somewhat with what Groves wrote in the foreword: [7]
All pertinent scientific information which can be released to the public at this time without violating
the needs of national security is contained in this volume. No requests for additional information
should be made to private persons or organizations associated directly or indirectly with the project.
Persons disclosing or securing additional information by any means whatsoever without
authorization are subject to severe penalties under the Espionage Act. [8]